January 6, 2007 Yet another potent UAV is in the development phase, this one for the UK Ministry of Defence to be constructed by a team headed by BAE Systems, together with Rolls-Royce, Smiths Aerospace and QinetiQ, plus MoD military staff and scientists. The four year project to develop a world-class UAV (Unmanned Air Vehicle) Technology Demonstrator Programme called Taranis. Ground testing of the UKP124 million Taranis project is expected to take place in early 2009 with the first flight trials taking place in 2010. Named after the Celtic God of Thunder, Taranis will be an unmanned fast jet demonstrator the size of a Hawk trainer - making it one of the world's largest UAVs - that will be stealthy, fast and be able to test deploy a range of munitions over a number of targets and be able to defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft.